Everyone Chasing You

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Not a good day for them.


This is when for some reason a character is chased by a large handful of other characters. In animated shows this can often have a freeze frame shot. Sometimes a show even ends an episode on this.

Has a high probability of being scored to Yakkety Sax.

A Super-Trope to Thundering Herd.

Compare Chased by Angry Natives, while this trope is usually with named characters. Also compare Torches and Pitchforks, which may very well overlap with this.

Examples of Everyone Chasing You include:

Anime and Manga

  • Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok had Yamino and Loki being chased by a Brainwashed and Crazy Thor, and then successively by Heimdal, Frey, and Freya.
  • This happened a lot at the end of the first series of Pokémon.
  • Happens in Mahou Sensei Negima on occasion. One notable example occurs during Ako's Day in The Limelight micro-arc: Negi, thanks to the use of a time machine, ends up being chased by Madoka, two versions of Kotaro, Chachamaru and Chisame, and himself.
    • Recent events have taken this to the next (il)logical step, with the entire school after him.
  • It's happened to Sosuske in Full Metal Panic! Fumoffu.
  • The opening scene of the first Ranma ½ movie is a constantly-escalating version of this.
  • Happens in Ladies versus Butlers! when Akiharu is accidentally branded as both a pervert and a delinquent.
  • One end of an episode in Mega Man NT Warrior had this.

Comic Books

  • A frequent ending in Groo the Wanderer, even after he'd spent the entire comic effortlessly slaying equal to larger numbers of better armed people.
  • A lot of Leonard Le Genie stories end like this, usually because half the town is destroyed thanks to his inventions.

Film

  • Happens twice to pre-frosh character Tom in PCU, the first time even Exploited Trope. Then later, it happens to one of the antagonists.
  • Austin Powers starts with a sequence of people chasing him through town. Set to the Theme Tune.
  • A scene in School of Rock, after the parents take Dewey's remark about touching something in their kids literally.
  • The entire movie It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is a snowballing cascade of mob chases, as more and more of Hollywood's top actors join in the fun.
  • A classic example would be Frankenstein's monster.
  • In the Buster Keaton short film Cops he ends up getting chased by what looks like hundreds of cops.
  • In Love Potion No. 9, the female antagonist, figuring more is better, overdoses on the titular love-potion, which causes every man to hear her voice to fall in love with her, and every woman to hear her voice to hate her. And then she goes out in public.
  • Promo posters for The Marrying Man.

Literature

  • At the end of Jingo, Commander Vimes was leading a procession and spotted an unlicensed thief stealing a lady's bag. He immediately gave chase while still leading the procession, which caused the people behind him to follow his lead since they didn't really know if this was how things were supposed to go, which caused the people behind them to run after them since they don't know what's happening at the front and they're getting left behind, which caused everyone watching to run after them too because, well, everyone else was doing it. While all of this was happening, the poor thief continued to run as fast as he could because he had taken one look over his shoulder and found the whole of Ankh-Morpork society bearing down on him.

Live-Action TV

  • Benny Hill would most likely be the Trope Codifier, as many, many of his skits ended up with someone being chased by an ever growing line of irate bystanders.
  • The Australian TV show The Farmer Wants a Wife.

Video Games

  • This happens in Left 4 Dead if a Boomer vomits on you. Assuming, of course, you've got enough room to run and don't get immediately surrounded by the horde.
  • Sadly EA's games Rugby 06 and Rugby 08 often deteriorate into examples of this.

Web Comics

  • In Greg, Ted streaks across a college campus naked, as everyone chases him for disguising himself as a phony professor here.

Western Animation

  • Happens on The Simpsons a couple times, most of which involve Homer (cf. "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner" when all the restaurateurs and chefs of Springfield chase after Homer after Lisa saves him from eating a dangerous eclair, "Saddlesore Galactica" where jockey-sized trolls chase after Homer after Homer breaks his promise to throw the horse race so they can win, and "Missionary Impossible" where PBS characters chase after Homer after he tricks them into thinking he's pledging $10,000 to the network).
  • After his brain was warped by feminism, Peter's friend Cleveland took him to a Million Man March to snap him out of it. Peter defiantly approached a microphone and spoke a few "truths" to the men, about how the ills of the country were their fault because they were men, not because they were all black men. Cue bird's-eye-view of tiny white dot chased by a whole lot of black dots.
  • Happens to the titular heroes in Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo, from three sources. Crazed Japanese schoolgirls were pursuing Beast Boy, Cyborg was hounded by sushi chefs, and Robin was chased by...the local authorities. Eventually, there was a mass convergence.
  • Happens in the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "The Ticket Master". When everyone realizes that Twilight Sparkle has tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala, they all chase her trying to ask her to take them with her, complete with a Suspiciously Similar Song version of Yakety Sax.